It’s common knowledge that Newspapers have fallen on some hard times, but we never thought the as reputable paper would resort to manufacturing News Stories using fictional skits as factual support.

On June 24, 2011 we provided the Bay Citizen with a reminder of some very basic journalistic and legal principles:

First — a parody with no basis in reality cannot provide support for a statement that is supposed to be factual.

Second – a parody is characterized by “ironic inversion”. If a person is acting and is i.e. playing a homophobe for the purpose of ridiculing homophobes, a statement to the effect that the actor playing the homophobe was a homophobe would be without factual foundation.

Third – in the law, parody cannot be used to support a factual statement concerning a person’s life history, his beliefs or anything else for that matter as the statement would based on a fanciful skit that has no basis in reality. In otherwords, a person playing a frog on stage does not support the statement that the person is a frog in real life.

Fourth – the definition of acting when playing a role means to temporarily take on the persona or character of another. Therefore, if a person is acting, the person is temporarily portraying someone other than him/herself. Therefore as a matter of law, statements made in the performance of a role while playing the part of another is imputed to the character being portrayed, not the person actually portraying the character.

PART II of JOURNALISM 101 Tutorial:

Based on the above simple premises, we informed the Bay Citizen newspaper that a particular video they wanted to use as a factual basis for a statement was a parody in which Mr. Chapman is acting (i.e. playing the character of another). As was explained to the Bay Citizen:

The character portrayed in the video was a parody that made fun of violent homophobes in order to highlight the evil of homophobia. I am no more guilty of making slurs than is Max Adler, the actor portraying the bully in Glee, who torments Chris Colfer’s gay character; prompting “Kurt” to change schools in the story line. I am certain Chris understands that Max is acting.

As in Glee, the character in the video is based in fantasy, not fact and was part of a larger acting production that when seen in context “no reasonable person would believe the video to be interpreted as stating actual facts.”

Despite the above detailed explanation of acting and parody, Bay Citizen reporter Jennifer Gollan somehow still could not understand the distinction.

Congress currently has a bill regarding restraint in committee. HWC submitted comments on the bill. Eight hours later, HWC receives a call from Jennifer Gollan, a Bay Citizen Reporter doing a story on restraint. We believe this story was prompted by Congressman’s Miller’s Office and the disability rights lobbyist groups working with and in his office to pass this bill through and HWC was targeted for exercising its right of free speech to comment on such bill.

HWC has been a staunch supporter of a person’s individual right to choose his/her own treatment and a person’s right to self-defense and defense of another. HWC believes that it should be the parents and guardians and professionals treating the child that should be responsible for the treatment, not Congress. Click here for HWC’s comments to Congress.

There has been an issue with Congressman Miller’s office in the past and there was a prior investigation into Congressman Miller’s abuse of his office to target a private citizen.

Reporter Jennifer Gollan misused her position as a reporter for the Bay Citizen to improperly target and discredit an American citizen with unfactual information. Ms. Gollan stated to Mr. Chapman in a phone conversation that her intent in writing the article was to purposely and irreparably damage his relationship with HWC client agencies in the Bay area.

In any other time, a guy who barely gets out of H.S. and manages to elevate himself despite some setbacks, due to hard work and a God-given ability to innovate something meaningful to a lot of people would be, if not celebrated, at least treated with some degree of respect. Not in this time and not by you, apparently.

The problem with your way of thinking and your way of conducting yourself is twofold; 1) you have confused education for intellectual clarity and 2) you think yourself powerful enough to crush a message by crushing the person.

As to the former, you need to start hanging out with people who are more intellectually honest than they are terminally elite so you can learn the difference between a person with a degree and a person with a vision.